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Excerpt from Cisco Unauthorized

    Prophet

    Rickey’s Hyatt House doesn’t look much like a church. The unprepossessing motel–cum-conference room complex could be one of many such places strung out along El Camino Real, the six-lane, 40 mile long roadway that is the spine of Silicon Valley. But on this weekday morning, in the winter of 1999, the crowd that has gathered in the foyer of Rickey’s conference center is in a devotional mood.

    These supplicants have come to get the word of a prophet of the Information Age, of a man whose company is touching the businesses and lives of everyone in that room. They have come to hear John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, chief evangelist of the knowledge economy’s tree of life--the network—give a sermon.

    Chambers, accompanied by a phalanx of PR aides and associates, arrives a few minutes early and slips into the back of the auditorium. He settles into a folding chair, carefully clasps his hands as if to pray, and closes his eyes. He might as well be chanting. He has a beatific look on his face, and, surrounded by his handlers, no member of the hoi polloi can get near enough to break his reverie.

    Chambers, a trim five foot nine with thinning blond hair, is not the kind of man you would notice if you passed him on the street. There’s nothing remarkable about his physical appearance, nothing that leaves a lasting impression. He doesn’t have the laser eyes of a Steve Jobs or the gawky face of a Bill Gates. He’s an everyman. He could be the corner grocer, the school teacher, the Little League coach. Today, he’s dressed in the uniform of the corporate middle-managers he’s about to address—jacket, white shirt, tie. The suit may be cut from a finer cloth, but it’s not vastly different from the off-the-shelf brands he wore in his IBM days—twenty years and a half a billion dollars ago. Yet this everyman, who is now quietly sitting alone with his thoughts, is at the center of a revolution, which, before it ends, will profoundly change our world.

    Chambers has come to this crowded conference room to do what he has done so many times in the past—spread the good word about his deepest passion—the network and its unimaginable power to vastly improve life. And it is fitting that Chambers has chosen to give his sermon at Rickey’s.

    There are very few landmarks in the Silicon Valley, a place that celebrates impermanence and glorifies the next new thing above all else, but Rickey's Hyatt House is one of the handful. It sits on a nondescript corner in what passes for a low-rent part of Palo Alto. It is one of the Silicon Valley's most famous watering holes, an old-fashioned 1950s motor court, located just a few blocks away from the original locations of Hewlett-Packard, Shockley Semiconductor, NASA-Ames, and Fairchild Camera & Instruments--early centers of electronics innovation that did indeed change the world as they produced first transistors, then combinations of many of these on one fingernail sized sliver of silicon that were called Integrated Circuits or ICs. These technological feats of magic ushered in the modern age of electronics.

    Rickey’s low-slung bungalow-style motel rooms, which came with parking for the car right in front, were the backdrop for nonstop parties in the 50s and 60s, when semiconductors were being baked in ovens throughout the Valley and the world was beating a path to the chipmakers of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara and Palo Alto. Today the motel, freshly painted brown, is owned by the Hyatt chain, and no one would mistake it for a temple, a mission, or a cathedral.

    But a congregation has gathered here today, a congregation made up of white men in their thirties and forties, with a smattering of women and minorities. After they finish their coffee and Danish, they come into the auditorium and respectfully take their seats in folding chairs.

    Most are corporate warriors from every stratum of the American business world. They are not chief executives or rainmakers. They are the lifeblood of American business. Middle managers--finance, operations, business development. They work for pharmaceuticals and leasing companies, banks and telecommunications biggies and wannabes. They are the well-scrubbed, well-heeled, heart of the modern business world.

    They’ve congregated in this nondescript meeting hall, shelled out their money to hear something that will help them understand, give them some glimmer of insight, make manifest the direction of the technology and cultural revolution that is swirling all around them.

    They are looking for the word, some sign, to help them understand the incomprehensible and invisible magic of broadband , make sense of the mystery at the core of most of their business lives this bright and sunny winter day at the end of the 20th century: What is the meaning of the revolution in information? How can they harness it?

    They’ve come to hear the leader of the one company that has tamed the Information Age, the good missionary of the data world, apostle of the Internet. They’ve come to hear his sermon at the dawn of a new millennium. On a crisp and clear January morning in 1999, John Chambers has come to this undistinguished place to testify on the power of what has led him – and Cisco – to embark their latest, greatest voyage.

    Serendipity, not divine knowledge, placed Chambers and Cisco in this position, at the very nexus of the Internet universe. But it is the business skill – good old-fashioned business smarts – that has kept them there, and that longevity is due largely upon the remarkable evangelical leadership of Chambers.

    When he is introduced to the several hundred conference attendees a few minutes later, Chambers becomes new age Network Man. He eschews the carefully staged elevated podium at the head of the room and walks out among the gathered attendees, using a wireless mike and staying within a couple of feet of the first rows, gliding up the aisles, all the while presenting, cheerfully and happily presenting his message about the hope inherent in the Internet.

    Chambers starts in by going straight for the jugular. "Make no mistake about it: The Internet is nothing short of the second Industrial revolution. Industry is going to change. You have to make the change or you won't survive. The key is how to do it without losing your existing business. And one of the toughest of challenges is figuring out the new channels. Timing is the key. Are you ready? Do you understand how it will affect your products, your company, yourself? Are you positioned and prepared to take part in this new industrial, internet revolution? Or are you going to be left behind?" A deeply, privately religious man who believes in God and regularly attends church, Chambers has an unshakeable faith in the goodness of the Internet. It is a religion he's pitching, an Internet church that embraces all the world's citizens.

    Making good while doing good fueled waves of Yankee Clipper captains and Christian missionaries a hundred years ago. Transmogrified by the Internet, personified by Chambers, energized on a global scale, the same twin themes of god and capitalism are rising again. The difference is that in the earlier incarnation it was cornering the market for finite raw materials and colonizing the globe's limited physical resources that the canny traders were after. In the new Internet world, there is an infinity of available space, no end to the territory that can be colonized, and the only raw materials needed to stake out empires are intelligence and packets of data. But the most successful traders are still the best missionaries.

    Chambers’ message is a dogma whose wildfire will engulf the established order, and which will provide opportunity for all. He has no need for the fire and brimstone of the hill country preachers of West Virginia, where he grew up, no need for fear and damnation in his vision of the shining city on the hill. John Chambers' Internet is holistic, all embracing, a California touchy-feely new age religion that is about a state of mind as much as, maybe more so than, technology.

    Best of all, the message he's sending about the Internet--that the more everyone on earth connects up to it the better life will be for all mankind--is in perfect harmony with him, as well as lining up the stars for financial windfalls to everyone who was smart enough to buy Cisco stock already.

    John Chambers is constantly networking himself, listening, looking for new perspectives on his company from everyone he meets. Everyone he meets he solicits for information about how his company is doing. By listening hard and making that connection to every person he is in effect hooking them up to his network. This is no testosterone-laced Valley madman--no Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison or Bill Gates model of Silicon Valley ruler. Chambers wants to hear what everyone has to say. This is not just words, not just some empty promise cadged from a consultant in corporate executive manners. This is not an act, this is truly who he is. In this he is the perfect apostle, a person whose very personality matches the dominant truth of his era. The answer is the network. Apply that same principle to a life, and the result is John Chambers. This is what saints, and martyrs, are made of.

    Today is no different. It is quintessential John Chambers--breaking down barriers, asking for feedback, treating everyone he meets as an equal, and framing everything by an infectious and deep-rooted belief in the value of the Internet to enrich your business exponentially. And the message is: the network is it. Make your company fit a fast moving environment by listening hard to customers and offering them what they want—especially if that means changing rapidly and nimbly to accommodate their every whim no matter how big you become.

    In fact, there is perhaps no more perfect personality to head Cisco than the very malleable, ever, perhaps too solicitous, John Chambers. The affable one. He proudly describes to his audience the process of re-inventing Cisco seven times over the same number of years. This is conglomerate business management taken to a higher level. Mercurial, quick to change, willing to change, embracing change all the time. Deliriously and happily listening to customers in earnest. Inventing and rethinking and reinventing Cisco through, and by, acquisitions and partnerships, all the while spinning the company using his own brand of aw-shucks good ol’ boy grafted to Elmer Gantry performance.

    John Chambers’ Cisco is very much a part of this valley. It was founded up the road, at Stanford University, by two lovers who wanted to send each other messages across the university’s disparate computer networks. They perfected the router – a piece of hardware, really, -- that connected the two computer systems and allowed them to trade messages and files with each other. A dynasty ensued.

    In Silicon Valley where the stereotype is of table-thumping executives yelling through 20-hour days, a culture of paranoia and aggression, John Chambers simply doesn't fit. He's unfailingly a nice guy, almost obsequious in his interest in others, modest and solicitous of ideas from everyone he meets. In looking for a high-tech executive, central casting would throw him out in its first pass.

    But the Internet is whirling across human society, and a new, more powerful Internet is poised to emerge that will bring high-speed data access to large segments of the American population within the year. In fact, most voice phone calls will soon pass over fiber optic, broadband lines, systems in need of Cisco products. As a result, Chambers and his company are sitting in an extraordinary position.

    Not only is Cisco poised to make profits on all this growth and ferment, profits that should make the current size of the $16 billion company seem modest. But Chambers is also in the unique position of having become the embodiment of this revolution. He personifies the Internet's potential to improve the human condition.

    "We've been called the corporation of the future. Not for the products we make, but for how we use the Internet to do business. In 1997 we did one third of the world's ecommerce. We provide 70% of our corporate support over the Internet. We increased our productivity by 20%--it was actually higher, but the board wouldn't have believed me if I told them it was 40%. We are the Internet experts. I'd like to tell you it is because we are smart people and visionaries. But what we are is very good at listening. And if you listen to customers, they'll tell you exactly how to move forward."

    John Chambers believes, really believes, in the Internet revolution and by networking with everyone he meets, he embodies it. If there is one thing that characterizes the chief executive of Cisco it is his almost cloying attentiveness to others. He doesn't just say he wants to listen to what the audience can tell him, he makes sure to make time to get their input. He doesn't just tell you he wants to hear what you think of this or that decision, but he makes sure to solicit those comments at the end of an interview. He doesn't simply say he wants to listen to customers; he stands politely and chats with them after his speech, not once being anything less than fascinated in their stories.

    This is the Zen of John Chambers. He isn't a chief executive who believes he has the answers, who believes he is anointed, who believes he is better than the rest of us, who believes that he has the secret formula for success.

    The irony is that so far Cisco does seem to have that formula.

    "There's an enormous business opportunity in all of this, but particularly in the move to the high speed Internet and the advent of consumer networking. The one thing Cisco has done consistently is that whenever we take on a market in transition, we gain market share. To gain market share in normal times you slug it out forever for one or two or three percent growth. But if you catch it in transition, you can gain twenty or thirty or forty percent share points. Look at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble is a well run company with 27,000 employees, $4 billion in sales, 1000 physical locations, huge barriers to entry. But in two years a virtual company, with 1600 people now has a market cap eight times theirs. This will occur in every industry. People, and companies, who get their timing wrong, will fail."

    Now he plays the statesman. New turf. A political run? There’s a primetime TV network interview, Diane Sawyer doing a fluffy profile: The World’s Greatest Boss. He is surrounded by a PR machine that carefully controls every detail of every appearance. He is the only executive Cisco provides for interviews. And those must be scheduled months in advance, with questions submitted ahead of time, and no room for innovation. For all its talk of a New Economy, this is a company that behaves like an Old World one.

    "My personal passion is education. I believe that in this country it is broken. Our K through 12 system is a disaster. We are spending the third largest percent of GNP on it, yet our math and science scores are abysmal. But the Internet can completely change this. In very short order all devices that help us learn are going to be IP based. Business has to play a role in this. If we in the technology industry are going to create this revolution, we can't leave a majority behind. No more haves and have-nots. There has to be Internet access for everyone."

    This is heady stuff for a capitalist. Chambers doesn't cut the figure of a captain of industry, or a wild eyed revolutionary, or stump-pounding politician. Chambers is quick to smile, wants to give of himself, and is blessed with a kind of frenetic high energy that lets him rush through his days. Married for 25 years to the same woman, they have two college age children. He is unfailingly polite, and generous, gregarious and garrulous. But the real source of his good nature turns out to be the very center of his company's products: As the world adopts more networking gear--more of Cisco's gear if he has his way of course, but there's plenty of opportunity for all --Chambers sees not just profits for Cisco, but profits for all of society.

    “Eighteen months ago, when we started talking about the consumer revolution that was going to come to the industry, no one believed us. However the pace of acceptance of this revolution has almost always been underestimated. We're inside a tornado market already. Emails outnumber regular mail--but projections are for there to be 15 to 20 billion emails per day by 2002 or 2003. That is huge. The rate of acceptance of the Internet is already six times faster than the telephone, four times faster than the PC itself. The pace of change is huge. The rewards are huge. But timing is essential. Too early and an expensive roll-out won’t be able to pay for itself. Too late, and it is almost impossible to pick up the lost market share."

    John Chambers for his all-American background--the son of two country doctors, trained as a lawyer who never practiced, ten years as a top IBM salesman, another decade as an executive at Wang Laboratories--is a Zen master. It doesn't matter that he has an Appalachian accent. It doesn't matter that he's always attired in blue suit and power tie. It doesn't matter that he runs a sixteen billion dollar company with 26,000 employees.

    In his heart, in his soul, John Chambers has found his center. He knows just who he is, and is at peace with it. His religion is the good of the Internet. In a time of galloping change, of technological innovation that stretches the limits of the human mind, of fear uncertainty and doubt as the Internet promises to swamp much of what we've taken for granted, his good natured certainty about the value of this revolution is calming. And his company's undisputed success gives him the credentials to espouse it.

    His mantra: Nice guys, ferocious competitors, and the Internet will change everything. His vehicle: A company of networking superstars who are loosely integrated around the strategic theme of making the data revolution happen with Cisco, but who are also given plenty of room for entrepreneurial decision making in choosing tactics. His secret: He embodies the Internet Age in every cell of his being. Forget the Organization Man, emblem for the last great period of prosperity in American culture in the 1950s. In the New World --a phrase that Chambers uses liberally to contrast Cisco with its Old World brethren, the bigger, well-heeled competitors from the voice telephony equipment market like Lucent, Nortel, Siemens, and Ericsson--there's a new person afoot. This is Network Man, and John Chambers is the model. Call him John the Baptist. He’s the advance man for the IP crusade.

    "A few months ago I stood in front of 300 of the world's largest company telco executives and had to tell them the truth about voice. My message was simple: In the coming few years not only would the area where all their profits came from be commoditized, but it would be given away free by the IP companies. The ability to price products differently, in different geographies around the globe, was going to disappear as the Internet flattened distance, and changed the rules. Education was going to change from something that was done in rooms like this, to something that individuals did in their own time, at their own pace, over the Internet. Service was going to improve dramatically. And the playing field will be leveled between big and small companies in ways that we haven't even begun to imagine yet. It might well not be an advantage to be big going forward. The one thing that is certain? The fast are going to beat the slow."

    In the Q&A session that he hosts at the end of the half hour presentation, Chambers runs all over the auditorium with a microphone to get questions. This is a centi-millionaire whose stock holdings make him worth in excess of $575 million acting as microphone runner.

    In a masterful, almost beatific touch that would be coy from anyone else, he asks for business cards from anyone interested in partnering with Cisco--no matter that his company is the 800-pound gorilla of the networking space and the engine behind much of the Internet's craziness, and the audience is low-level managers who've spent a few hundred dollars to get out of the office for a couple of days. This isn't the archetypal chief executive with limos and trappings and power and self-importance. This is a disciple at the peak of his form, a man whose pride and ego have become sublimated to the company's story, a story that perfectly fits his outgoing outwardly directed personality.

    All that he needed was church bells to ring and incense and the religious illusion would have been complete. But his message was every bit as mesmerizing as any psalm to this audience. In his presentation the ideas are unimaginable, both good and bad. There is a microwave oven with a web browser in the door. A piano and violin controlled from a web browser. Drapes and lighting managed over the Internet. Business opportunity galore. A world of limitless riches. Change without precedent. Accelerated time that makes every year in Internet time worth seven on the calendar. A better world. All through data. The kicker? You have to seize it. Now. No time for equivocation. And the sure path to satori? Buy Cisco gear end to end.
    Amen.
 

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